SC House delays debate on ethics package

Leaders of the South Carolina House said Thursday that a re-written ethics package addresses critics' concerns, but with a deadline looming, the chamber postponed a vote.

House Majority Leader Bruce Bannister said many Republicans wanted time to review the newly crafted, 38-page bill before voting. Debate has been postponed until Tuesday.

"This gives everybody time to read it," Bannister, R-Greenville, said after a closed caucus lunch over the amendment.

The changes followed criticism from libertarian, government-watchdog and environmental groups, which questioned why the bill that's supposed to strengthen ethics laws actually would decriminalize ethics violations.

Bannister said that was not his intent, and the amendment fixes that.

He said he only meant to separate technical from criminal violations - to impose fines for offenses such as the late filing of forms, while leaving criminal charges for bribery or other gross violations of the public's trust to the attorney general's office to pursue. But he acknowledged it wasn't written correctly.

On Wednesday, critics accused Republicans of crafting a bill that moved oversight of elected officials in the wrong direction. Ashley Landess of the South Carolina Policy Council said it left "a wide-open door for bribery."

"I get it," Bannister said. "That was the way it was perceived."

Critics said the bill was rushed through. It wasn't finalized in writing until last week, when it was pushed out of the subcommittee and committee on back-to-back days. The public couldn't review it until it was posted online late on April 18.

"This is not a procedural oddity but a failure of democracy," Lynn Teague of the League of Women Voters said Wednesday.

Bannister said he wished he'd had more time, but he wanted to move the bill to make the May 1 crossover deadline to the Senate. A bill passed after that deadline takes a two-thirds vote just to be discussed in the other chamber.

While the compromise was hurriedly put in writing, Bannister said, the bill was months in the making. He called it a "comprehensive package that includes the best of everyone's ideas," following public hearings and negotiations with Democrats and Republican Gov. Nikki Haley's office.

Both the House and Senate created study committees last year in the off-session to come up with separate plans. In January, a non-legislative panel created by Haley issued its suggestions for making elected officials more accountable and government more responsive to the public.

Haley said she's OK with waiting until Tuesday, if that means passing a strong bill.

"We have a unique opportunity to strengthen the ethics laws of our state and restore the people's trust in their government. I have every faith that the House will seize that opportunity," she said, but warned that "any and every effort to delay past Tuesday is an effort to kill ethics reform - and that is something South Carolina cannot afford."

House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford said Democrats, who also held a closed caucus lunch to review the amendment, are ready to support it. But he had no problem with giving members the weekend to review it.

A major change in the bill is that it no longer abolishes the House and Senate ethics committees or transfers their duties to a revamped state ethics commission.

The amendment leaves the state Ethics Commission responsible for all non-legislative campaigns, while creating a joint, 16-member House-Senate committee composed of both legislators and their appointees. Bannister said the change was prompted by Wednesday's state Supreme Court ruling involving the Budget and Control Board overstepping its authority on employees' health care premiums. He said members pointed to it to back up arguments that an all-encompassing ethics commission involving the executive and legislative branches presented a separation-of-powers problem.

That's bound to incite the critics, who have long advocated for the elimination of the legislative panels, saying elected officials can't adequately police themselves.

Other provisions of the bill would:

-Require politicians to disclose all of their income sources, including private businesses. They would have to specify the amount they're paid only from public agencies.

-Create a Public Integrity Unit to investigate allegations of criminal misconduct. Attorney General Alan Wilson has been advocating for the unit, which pools the resources of his office, the ethics commission, the State Law Enforcement Division, the Department of Revenue and inspector general's office.

-Extend the regulation of lobbyists to local governments and school districts, while keeping the definition of lobbyists intact. The groups complained the bill had broadened the definition so much that it could have forced mothers representing school groups to register as a lobbyist and pay a fee to speak at hearings.